Tunes: May Playlist. In June.

Well, it's been a slow several weeks over here at idiots_delight. I've gotten really into vacuuming lately.
While that made it tough to blog while I got my vacuuming ya-ya's out, it definitely didn't stop me from listening to a pretty good amount of music.

Whether or not the music itself was good is totally up to you. But the amount of music that I listened to was definitely good; there's no disputing that.

I kind of couldn't help but include "Get Lucky" on my last monthly playlist. I know it was the most ubiquitous song in the world at the time, but I feel like that happened for a reason. And that reason is that "Get Lucky" is a stupidly infectious groove.

That being said, so is "Doin' It Right." It might not have the level of universal accessibility that "Get Lucky" had. Indeed, its dynamics are basically an anti-build; the song keeps rising and rising, but never seems to crest that first hill. The tension is fantastic, and Panda Bear's stadium-sized voice complements Daft Punk's deft use of a simple chord progression like nobody's business.

May was an awesome month for music, and there's really no two ways around it. The National's Trouble Will Find Me was just one of the awesome releases that saw shelves that month, and "I Need My Girl" is arguably one of the album's highlights.

The National makes music that's weighed down with a very somber type of emotional deadweight, but few musicians can use this to their advantage the way Matt Berringer and his bandmates do. "I Need My Girl" is as emotionally stirring as it is simple and catchy.

Gonna be playing video games anytime soon? Might want to put this on in the background. It can be easy to get overwhelmed/sick of/offended by those growling robot-shit EDM synth sounds that seem to be so unavoidably popular these days, but Knife Party, for the most part, are doing it right. "LRAD" is a throbbing, pulsing death ray of a song, and that break towards the end is relatively minimalist glory. We get a solid build, but instead of going super nuts, Knife Party drop almost everything out except the beat and what sounds like a fucking gargantuan PVC pipe getting hit by a bunch of giants. Awesome.

This slick, ladyvoiced indie rock sextet from Australia put out one of the best albums of the year so far with their A Is for Alpine. Consistently solid, these guys and gals really know how to make the best out of an open D chord.

5. Kavinsky - Billzard

I spent May playing a decent amount of video games, and this playlist definitely reflects that. You might remember "Nightcall" from the Drive soundtrack, which appears on Kavinsky's Outrun album along with "Blizzard." The first proper song, "Blizzard" is a good example of everything Kavinsky does right, even if it does sound just a tiny bit 2008.

It's one of the rare songs that's best delivered when it comes paired with the album intro that actually comes before it. ShockOne are doing some pretty interesting stuff when it comes to what's being described as "techstep," and "Chaos Theory" is a great example. The song's about as heavy as it gets, and when the second drop cuts the time signature in half, it's hard not to chuckle a little bit as you nod your head.

Ah, another track that begs to be played alongside some of your favorite first-person shooters. (Seriously, if you've got CounterStrike: Global Offensive, just listen to a combination of Kill the Noise and Knife Party as you play it and you'll win every single game, guaranteed.) Kill the Noise doesn't always hit the nail on the head with the whole aggro-dubstep thing. It gets a little repetitive, and it's definitely not very original at this point...but "Thumbs Up" is a heavy dose of undeniable fun. Plus, heavily-used sample that gives the song its name is that little kid who's endlessly stoked about having ridden a bike for the first time, and it's one of the most awesome things ever.

While it might seem like the opposite is true, there's always room for another electro-dance act, if you ask me. Letherette's first, self-titled album is a wee bit inconsistent, but mostly keeps it pretty real, as evidenced by the smooth, shuffling "After Dawn."

Yet another superheavy track from ShockOne, "Big Bounce" heads more in the direction of all-out dance than its aggro-step infused cousin "Chaos Theory" does. The result is a buoyant, kinetic jam that, again, totally sounds like it was meant to be played alongside a video game, lasers firing in all directions. Good times.